Not quite the day I planned...!

About 9am I was in a local supermarket about 20 minutes' walk from home when I got an urgent phone call from Son#3 (who currently lives about 3 miles from us in the opposite direction from where I was). They'd woken up to find water seeping out of ceilings and walls and across floors. I advised turning off any stopcocks they could find while they tried to work out where it was from (they'd already worked out that it was coming from underneath the bath in the top floor of their 3-storey town house - and water had just begun to appear in a ceiling on the ground floor). As they have home emergency insurance they were also going to call on that, and meanwhile I promised to walk home as fast as I could, jump in the car and drive to their house.

[The home emergency cover wasn't much use - it took about 4 hours for the plumber to arrive and we had the situation under control by then.]

When I got there they'd already found that the water was spraying out from part of the shower pump which resides under the bath - it wasn't from a pipe connection, the pump itself was leaking. Closing the stopcock had had no effect (it turns out it's not working) but they'd managed to put the pump into a bucket which they were enptying frequently (it had fairly long flexible pipes). I was quickly able to spot isolating valves on the pump (not very obvious) so once I'd turned those the leak stopped. Phew!

Then it was a case of helping them to find the extent of the damage - certainly significant but fortunately not too bad.  The damp patches on the walls will have to be left to dry out and as you can see we had to lift some carpet and cut away the sodden underlay to dry it out and let the floor dry too. Fortunately Grandson A played happily in his big playpen while all this was happening, bless him!

I then popped home for lunch and my Editor and I went back in the afternoon with two dehumidifiers for them to use to help dry the place. Grandson A was still in a lovely good mood (as he almost always is).

Then it was back home to (almost) finish our own preparations for a visit by Sons 1&2 (et al) who arrive on Friday (it was rather critical to do it today as we'll be away in Oxford with Son1 and family from Monday to Friday).

It's not been the best week for Son#3 & family, as yesterday their 8-year old cat suddenly collapsed and died - presumably from a blood clot or bleed on the brain. They also have an older cat who they always expected to die first, so it was a real shock. Fortunately Grandson A's happy face will keep them going.